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September 12, 2013

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AS WE SEE IT…
IN BRIEF
J O E D OW N TOW N
GRAND AMBITION
The Downtown Grand might give Downtown Project some
stiff competition BY JOE SCHOENMANN
> GAME CHANGER? Seth
Schorr (inset) envisions the
Downtown Grand becoming
a major player Downtown.
Four months ago at the Smith
Center, hundreds of people gathered to watch a short video in which
Las Vegas city ofﬁcials declared that
Third Street represented the center of
Downtown.
I sat way in the back. I doubt anyone
saw me scoff.
Third Street has the Mob Bar, Triple
George Grill and Hogs & Heifers. The
Mob Museum can be seen at the end
of the street. But the "it" place is East
Fremont Street, where Downtown
Project is lining the streets with gold,
so to speak.
Schorr has a long history in casinos.
Among his detail-oriented approach:
He's tweaked the traditional model
and created one-stop, 24/7 shops for
the cash-out cages and players' club
cards. He's also put a deli smack-dab in
the middle of the sports book.
But here's why Downtown Grand
is really going to succeed and, IMHO,
become a focal point for a lot of
Downtown newcomers: 1,500-plus
Zappos employees.
It's about a block east of Zappos, so
walking there takes maybe three minutes. By contrast, walking to Fremont
East, where redevelopment is taking
place, takes "forever," in the minds of
convenience-seekers. Remember, too,
Zappos employees get good free eats
on the job.
Then again, Fremont East changes are coming. The Container Park
will open soon, and farther down the
street the old Ferguson Motel is going
to be redone with three new taverns.
The John E. Carson hotel at Sixth
and Fremont is also being renovated.
There are still no signiﬁcant or reliable
residential plans on the drawing board,
however, so Downtown-based customers are stretched a little thin.
If nothing else, Downtown Grand
will up the ante and give everyone a
little more choice.
PAY CUT
Nevada blew it,
and the state's
unemployed
are paying the
price. Sequestration cuts have
been looming for months, but
our state decided to wait until
the last minute—the end of the
budget year, September 30—to
carry them out, necessitating
a whopping 59 percent cut in
unemployment benefits this
month. That means the average
weekly benefit of $309 is now
about $127. Imagine having
your paycheck cut in half for
a month, and you have some
idea of the hardship this is
causing.
DR. JOHN
If you can't beat
'em … open a
luxury animal
hospital in
Summerlin. That's exactly what
disgraced congressman John
Ensign is doing, two years after
resigning his post because of
an ethics probe into his affair
with a former campaign staffer
(amid other unpleasantries,
including allegedly trying to set
her husband up as a lobbyist).
It makes perfect sense—Ensign
was a veterinarian before going
into politics. We're animal
lovers here, so we sincerely
wish him the best of luck in
the venture—as long as he
promises to never go into
politics again. –Ken Miller
COMMENTS? QUESTIONS? BEEFS? RANTS? LET'S HEAR IT! SHOOT AN EMAIL TO LVWEEKLY@ GMGVEGAS.COM
DOWNTOWN GRAND PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEILA NAVIDI
Joe Schoenmann doesn't just cover
Downtown, he lives and works there. He
is Greenspun Media Group's embedded
Downtown journalist, stationed at an
office in Emergency Arts. His work
appears in the Las Vegas Sun and Las
Vegas Weekly.
So despite the vision of Seth Schorr
and his team, whose ambitious plans to
remodel the Lady Luck looked incredible on paper, the idea that a tiny slice
of street and a casino resort could
become some kind of synergistic center
Downtown seemed about as likely as a
$2,000-per-hour hooker in a Motel 6.
Then I met Schorr at the Downtown
Grand, Lady Luck's new name, Tuesday
morning to take a look around.
Before I proceed, let me get this out
of the way: Casinos are not my thing.
They all look and sound and feel the
same to me after so many years. Like
most locals, I actively avoid the Strip,
and all I could remember of the old
Lady Luck was the stench of prime riband-baked potato dinners that seemed
to pour from the ventilation system. So I
was predisposed to disliking Downtown
Grand, which will wrap construction by
the end of October. And I could not have
been more mistaken.
You can walk into restaurants and
bars from the street, without ever having
to pass slot machines. Where massive AC
units used to sit, there is now a rooftop
bar and pool with artiﬁcial grass for picnics. Beneath Downtown Grand's west
tower, the ﬁrst ﬂoor will be home to ﬁve
non-franchise eateries, with price points
from $10 to $12. You open the door from
the street and you're already there.
HASHING
IT OUT
Score
another win
for common
sense! The Nevada Athletic
Commission raised its cannabis
testing threshold by 300
percent—from 50 ng/mL to 150
ng/mL, effective immediately.
The decision comes months
after the World Anti-Doping
Agency raised the threshold
by the same amount to reduce
the chances of athletes testing
positive for out-of-competition
use. Obviously fighters can't
be under the influence during
a fight, but it's good to see a
progressive stance taken on
what up to now has been a
silly issue.
12 LASVEGASWEEKLY.COM SEPTEMBER 12–18, 2013
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